


The Worst Part

by punkrockgaia



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Implied Phone Sex, Loneliness, Loss, M/M, spoilers for old oak doors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-07 00:44:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1878600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkrockgaia/pseuds/punkrockgaia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You carry on because you must...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Worst Part

**The worst part is waking up.** You wake up alone. You have woken alone many times, but now it is different. For just a moment before you wake, you forget you are alone. Then your eyes open, and you remember. You sit up, you put on your glasses, and you check your phone, to see if you got any texts during your few fitful hours of sleep. Sometimes you do, and your heart simultaneously soars and aches. (You resolve to somehow make your phone louder, so you never miss another text, sleep be damned.) Sometimes you do not, and your heart drops into your stomach. 

Regardless of whether or not there is a text, you get out of bed. There is work to be done, and you must do some of it. Night Vale depends on you to be there. You belong in Night Vale. You feel a sudden wave of nausea and decide against breakfast. You make coffee, instead, and shower, and shave, and get dressed. You drive into the station.

You carry on.

**The worst part is dealing with everyone else.** It's a good time for Night Vale. The looming threat of Strex, the unraveling of all things, the Smiling God, all have retreated to a distant point in the rearview mirror, at least for now. People are happy again. Laughing. Light. Whether they had been separated by doors or by electric fences, everywhere you look the sights and sounds of joyful reunion float through the air. There's a new mayor. There's a new sense of hope. 

You smile at the people that smile at you. At least, you think you are smiling. You may not be smiling. 

**The worst part is their pity.** You've learned to recognize the exact moment they remember. Their smiles stutter a bit, like the film reel of the universe has slipped off a cog. Then they make themselves frown just like you had been making yourself smile. They grip your arm gently. Some of them hug you. 

"Oh, oh, Cecil," they say. "How are you? Are you doing okay?" You lie and say yes, you're doing fine. Carlos calls every night, or every night by his time, anyway. He's fine and you're fine and everything is just dandy. Your voice is flat as you say this. 

It's an acceptable answer. It means they've done their duty. They clap you on the shoulder, relieved, and go back to their happiness. Before they leave, they always say the same thing: "If there's anything I can do, anything at all..." _Bring back my boyfriend,_ you want to say. _Put my life back together._

You do not say this. 

You get through your work day, get through the show. The work is good. The work is distraction. The work is relief. You work harder than you have ever worked. Ironic, now that Strex is gone there is so much work and so much smiling... Life is small now. 

If there are no texts throughout the day, you work very long hours indeed. But at some point Station Management gets restive, and you have to leave. You go out to your car and hesitate, knees shaking. The station SSP officer asks you if you are all right, and you say yes, you were just woolgathering. You get into the car and drive to your dark, quiet home.

**The worst part is the waiting.** At first, you pretended not to be waiting. You would bustle around, cleaning this or that, putting together a dinner that ultimately wound up covered in the refrigerator untouched, grooming the cat. (You've taken him back to the apartment. No one asked why or put up an argument.) Carving figures of the cat, until your shaking hands caused you to clip off _another_ paw and you had to set it down. 

You don't pretend any more. You feed Khoshekh, and you sit down at the table (sometimes in the dark), and you stare at your phone, and you _wait_. 

**The best part is the sound of his ringtone.** Sometimes the phone rings right away. Sometimes it rings much later. When it does ring, happy tears squeeze out of the corners of your eyes. You answer, and you smile your first real smile of the day. You talk about your respective days. You tell him about the funny things Khoshekh did, he tells you about the funny things the giant masked warriors did. You exchange professions of love. You exchange other things. Sometimes the calls lead to partially-undressed sprawling across sticky sheets. Sometimes they do not. 

You never want the calls to end. 

They always end.

**The worst part is the silence.** Eventually, Carlos has to go. You have to go to sleep, he needs rest to continue his journey. You both drag things out as long as you can, but eventually it ends. When it does, you can hear the breath in your lungs and the blood in your ears. You swear you can hear your cells divide. It is so. Quiet.

You try to hold on to the feeling that you had. You try, but it always dissipates, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. And you are left with a bed with one cold side. And you wonder if there will ever be a night when the phone does not ring. You wonder how that will feel. You wonder what you will do. You wonder how you will survive. 

You force yourself to get ready for bed. You put on your pajamas, you brush your teeth and give the cat a final cuddle, then climb into bed to pretend to sleep. You know you have to do it all again tomorrow.

**The worst part is that the world keeps spinning, even though you're stuck in place.**


End file.
